The social environment and exposure to life challenges are intimately interlocked with physiological responses to stress and to mental and physical well-being. Exposure to environmental stresses and the extent of their effects is mediated by the social environment encompassing position in social hierarchy and linkages within social networks and support systems. Ultimately, we plan to investigate the interconnections among stress, the social environment, and health. This pilot project has three primary goals: I) To perform a case study of health transitions among the elderly; 2) To adapt and refine a recently developed Boolean strategy for characterizing and abstracting from individual life histories; and 3) To contrast and evaluate the application of classical multivariate procedures with the adaptation of the new Boolean strategy developed in our second task. We will -;use data from two of the surveys that comprise the Study of Health and Living Status of the Elderly -- the initial 1989 interview and the 1993 follow-up. These surveys cover a wide range of data including full marital, residential and occupational histories, household composition and social and economic exchanges, health, health care service use and health-related behaviors, activities and attitudes, economic and financial well-being and emotional and instrumental supports and claims. The proposed effort will provide a case study and assessment of our proposed analytical strategy for a subsequent submission as an RO1. A related R03 has been approved for validation of the protocol for the collection of biological specimens which will be assayed for a set of stress-related hormonal markers. The two pilot projects are related through our theoretical model, but are complementary in their tasks and do not overlap in their proposed work.